Blue-White breakdown: Things we confirmed

Kentucky’s Blue-White basketball scrimmage Tuesday night was packed full of positives for the preseason No. 1 Wildcats. Coach John Calipari was pleased and fans are no doubt more excited than ever. Several players shined – some expected and some a surprise – so let’s rundown all the things we learned and what was confirmed in our first real look at this team in a game-like situation. I’ll break this up into two parts. The first:

THINGS WE CONFIRMED

* James Young is the most polished player on the court. Calipari told us Young, who was overlooked in that historic recruiting class despite being a McDonald’s All-American, has been the best player in practice. He was certainly that Tuesday. Young had 25 points, seven steals, three assists and three rebounds. He hit 11 of 16 shots (11 of 13 to start) and sank 3 of 5 threes.

“I had a lot of confidence, but I guess it’s just growing even more,” Young said. “I can play with these guys, too, and people are finally noticing that.”

He did a little bit of everything on offense: drove, dunked, pulled up, spotted up. He was effective from short, medium and long range. Defensively, he swarmed. Young had several deflections in addition to his steals.

“That’s what you saw today: what James Young could be,” Calipari said. “Forget about just scoring the ball and getting to the rim. He can really defend.”

Although his coach believes he can become a lockdown defender, Young admits that wasn’t a big part of his game in high school.

“Ever since I got here, they’ve been on me about my defense and how it wasn’t good,” Young said. “It just shows that I’ve been working hard. Coach Cal’s really been drilling us with defensive stuff, so it’s finally paying off.”

His offensive game is not too shabby either. Like his defense, Young’s ability to get to the basket is also relatively new.

“I really wasn’t used to it. I was used to just pulling up or just shooting,” he said. “Once Coach Cal added the dribble-drive, it really opened my game up a lot.”

Said center Willie Cauley-Stein: “James is a sensational scorer. He can put the ball in the hoop. What he did tonight was a mirror image of what he does in practice. I mean, it carries over. That’s the most important thing: it’s carrying over in a game setting.”

Also: Not that it needs mentioning after Tuesday’s performance, but Young said the pain in his shooting shoulder, which he tweaked in a recent practice, is “gone.”

* Julius Randle is a total freak, a potentially dominant force. Randle, who is supposed to be the star of this show, didn’t let Young completely steal the spotlight. He did several things that a 6-foot-9, 250-pound power forward just shouldn’t be able to do. He pulled up to swish jumpers, handled the ball deftly, passed with aplomb, froze Marcus Lee with a crossover to free himself for a dunk and also slammed one hard in Lee’s face. OK, that last one isn’t so shocking from Mr. Six Nine Two Fitty.

“I mean, that’s what he does,” Cauley-Stein said. “I expect it from him. I don’t expect anything less from him. So you gotta try to figure out how to stop it. I mean, good luck.”

The scary part is how Randle is adding to his bag of tricks. Calipari has been teaching him to play more on the perimeter, which caused some early discomfort and a slight loss of confidence. That seems to be behind Randle now.

“I've always been comfortable, but just take it to the next level and play at the college level and do that type of stuff, it's a different level. I was a lot more comfortable (Tuesday),” said Randle, for whom the biggest adjustment to play way from the basket is “just being under control; just reading defenses, not going too fast. We've got a pretty long team. Going against this, nobody's going to be this long in the country. Going against these guys is really helping me a lot, preparing me.”

One illustration of his progress came on a turnaround jumper Randle banked off the glass and in.

“Our coaches do a great job of just developing our skills,” he said, “making sure we don't have any weaknesses.”

Julius Randle with no weaknesses? Now that’s a thought that will haunt future opponents’ dreams.

“What was really good (Tuesday) is he wasn’t getting the ball early and he didn’t – he just played, and eventually he started getting it, and he walks the guy down, makes the foul-line jumper, makes his free throws, gets to the basket,” Calipari said. “He’s really good. He can really pass. That’s the biggest thing. I look at him and say, ‘Man, he can pass.’ ”

* Cauley-Stein is a skilled big man whose game is growing. The sophomore 7-footer looked sharp early, in a five-minute stretch to start the scrimmage where the presumed starting five was all together on the Blue team. Cauley-Stein had six points and three rebounds in that stretch. He finished with 15 points (on 7-of-12 shooting), seven rebounds, five steals, three assists, one block and one black eye.

“That’s my first shiner,” he said. “But it was good. It felt pretty good, you know what I’m saying? It felt good to get a shiner.”

Calipari and the Cats have to like that tough-guy attitude. Cauley-Stein is getting used to playing through a little pain. He’s just getting back in the groove after missing about two weeks of practice with a bad cut on his hand, which required several stitches after he smashed it into the rim – a problem to which so many of us can relate.

“I’m getting there. I’ve been doing a lot of extra work on shooting, because my finger’s still pretty weak and the scar tissue hurts a lot, so I’m still figuring out how to shoot the right way,” Cauley-Stein said. “It’s frustrating at times, because I put so much work in before it happened, and I thought it was going to be smooth sailing, but I just gotta figure it out, I guess.”

That finger didn’t affect his ability to flash unusual athleticism for a big man. Off a steal, Cauley-Stein took it coast-to-coast before soaring for a slam.

“That's part of my game,” Cauley-Stein said. “So it just felt normal.”

It’s not normal. Nor is it normal for an entire team to be so big and skilled. Ten players are 6-6 or taller, five of them at least 6-9. The Cats’ top eight players had 18 steals and eight blocks in the scrimmage. Their length and athleticism is going to be a headache for opposing offenses.

“The one thing you may not have noticed – you’d have to have a really good eye to notice this – we’re really big,” Calipari joked. “Like, really big.”

Stay tuned for Part II of the Blue-White breakdown: Things We Learned.